


Why Brand They Us With Base?

by creatureofhobbit



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-19
Updated: 2017-08-19
Packaged: 2018-12-17 03:02:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11842605
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/creatureofhobbit/pseuds/creatureofhobbit
Summary: Jon reacts to hearing of his real parentage.





	Why Brand They Us With Base?

Ygritte was right, he did know nothing. Jon didn’t even know who he was any more.

He’d gone through life thinking of himself as Jon Snow, the bastard son of Eddard Stark and some unknown woman named Wylla who he knew nothing of, and he only knew that name because Robert Baratheon wouldn’t let the matter drop. Now he knows that Jon was not the name he was born with, and he isn’t even sure whether he should be using the name Snow, the name widely associated with bastards everywhere, because for all he knows, he isn’t even a bastard at all. He had lived his whole life with the taint of bastard, believing the only way for that to no longer matter was to join the Night’s Watch, and look where that had got him.

Bran would know whether his parents had gone through any form of marriage; he knew everything else, after all. But Jon hadn’t given him the chance to tell him when Bran first brought it up, and he wasn’t going to ask him now. It had been hard enough for him to tell Jon even that much, and it wasn’t fair for Jon to put a kid in that position, especially one such as Bran who had been through so much already.

Jon wondered what it would have been like if Ned Stark had told the truth about his parentage from the start, if he had been raised as Ned’s nephew, not his bastard. Would Catelyn have found it easier to be a part of his life, to be close with him, to accept him, instead of the cold indifference she displayed, if she were not permanently confronted with the reminder of what she believed to be Ned’s betrayal? Would Jon have gone through all his childhood constantly feeling inferior to Robb, even to Theon, had he been raised knowing who he was? 

Or what if he had been raised among the Targaryen family, been brought up alongside Daenarys and her brother Viserys? What life would have awaited him? At this point, he felt that he may have been better off brought up as he was; his first meeting with Daenarys Targaryen had not gone well, and he had heard no good of Viserys. Yet they were his family, family he had grown up not knowing because he had been unaware of his true identity, and he could not help but wonder about the childhood he could have had.

Yet he could not judge Ned too harshly for his actions; he understood that had it been widely known that Rhaegar Targaryen had another child, it would have posed a threat to Robert Baratheon’s claim to the throne, and that Ned had done what he thought he had to do to honour Lyanna, to keep Jon safe. Given the choice, Jon wasn’t sure he would have wanted Ned to do anything differently back then.

But this had changed everything he ever thought he knew about himself.


End file.
